


Wondrous Strange

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [10]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Guilt, John Has a Beard, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Reincarnation, Revenge, Shakespearean Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 16:20:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4144422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has been kidnapped and drugged - and thus is in Richard in his waking state. In his dreams, he seeks Khan, for Sherlock will use everything in his grasp to find and rescue John again. But there is more to John's captor than even his captor knows, and someone whom Richard has wronged seeks revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wondrous Strange

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Hamlet:  
> Horatio:  
> O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
> 
> Hamlet:  
> And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.  
> There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  
> Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Three weeks it had been since Richard had woken in this room of steel and strange glass. Three weeks in which his beard had grown in, his left arm had become prick’d with needlemarks (while his right hung useless) and his slender form shrunk thinner with his endless pacing of this smooth-walled prison.

Three things did not change for Richard during his captivity. His scorn for his captor, his refusal to speak words his captor would accept for truth, and his nightly dreaming.

Even when his captor tainted his water to bestow a drugged slumber, Richard’s dreaming self opened eyes into his glade, and there he found his Khan.

On that first night’s dreaming, he met at once the enraged, infuriated Khan, striding the ground in readiness for battle.

“Where,” he demanded of his Richard, “Where did he take you? Even if your waking self as John did not see, there must be some indication where our enemy has brought you. What I cannot unravel of this world and this time, my waking Sherlock self will know all. Where are you, my love?”

Richard did his best, though the part of him that knew itself as John was well asleep under the sting and lullaby of the stuff in his veins.

“I see no sky, love, nor hear the world beyond these walls.”

“What does he ask you? What does he say?”

“He watches, and sneers, and seeks to know who thus made John a madman, to think he is a king. He believes I mean you harm.”

“I will find him out,” swore Khan, “And as Sherlock I will teach him to keep you from me.”

“Aye, we will teach him lessons, love,” swore Richard in return, “For he is sore in need of them. But he harms me not, excepting in this separation from thee, which is a harm I will not endure. If once I may be rid of this wall between he and I, there will be suffering for it.”

“Aye,” growled Khan, “Suffer he shall.”

And each night thereafter, Richard and Khan had met, Richard speaking what he might of what he saw and heard and tasted and smelled in his waking hours, while Khan appeared in fragmented snatches, the sign of the waking Sherlock eschewing sleep in his hunt for John.

Until the dream where, finally, after many attempts, the dream forms of Richard and Khan were able to touch their sleep-created skins.

In the glade, Khan held out his hand and tried to grasp Richard’s. Their fingers but brushed, in the first contact achieved in all these many days.

“You are north,” said Khan with conviction, “Compass-like, you tug on me. North and below the ground.”

“Buried deep,” Richard realised, and he nodded, “Yet not deep enough. I cannot break from my dungeon, but I call to thee.”

“I come,” determined Khan.

And then a sound broke into Richard’s sleeping and he awoke, still entrapped, still alone with his enemy, the one called _Mycroft._

*

Mycroft Holmes stood at the clear window looking into Richard’s chamber. Richard’s arm stung again, by which he knew another dose had been administered of the poison that kept Richard in the waking body of John Watson, who slept, restless and angry, beneath his skin.

“We’ll try this again, shall we?” said Mycroft, cool and aloof and a little bored.

“Thou art a maggoty knave,” replied Richard, “And thy aims will be thwarted. You will not separate me from my heart for long. He who loves me will find me out, and once reunited, you shall receive a beating in recompense for the wrongs you have done to us.”

“I will say, you are consistent,” said Mycroft drily, “But whatever brainwashing has been done to you, I’ll crack it. Any danger you represent to my brother will be done away with, if I have to begin to employ more direct methods for uncovering the fact.”

“Wouldst though torture me?” Far from being cowed by the idea, Richard was amused and defiant. “Canst thou devise pains and punishments for a body well-used to unkindnesses much worse? If I can endure the separation of my soul from my soul for centuries, until our sundered hearts could once more beat our double anthem, why, thy petty hurts can harm me not.”

“Your adherence to this pretence of historical possession is tedious.”

“Thy face and voice are tedious, and yet I shall endure them,” said Richard, “For thy confusion and rage are sweet to me. I am Richard, as I am John, as I have told thee and told again. I cannot change what is truth.”

“You will confess to me your plans,” snarled Mycroft, “And you will never see my brother again.”

Richard’s lip curled beneath his scruffy beard. “You love your brother as a miser loves his purse, for the possession and not the joy of it. Thou art a pinchpenny villain. My waking John self sees how you thus love our Sherlock, how you profess your kinship and concern, yet in the act of it, such concern is nought but ash and piss. Aye, thy love is truly _brotherly_.”

Were the scorn of it acid, it would have burnt holes through the glass divide.

Mycroft frowned angrily. “I will see to my brother’s safety, since he seems unable to see to it himself.”

Richard’s sneer only intensified. “I know what ‘tis to have a brother’s love, that thing of duty felt in the spleen but not the heart,” he said, “And know thee for thy sins. Your brother, my Sherlock, deserves better from that love than your jealousy and spite. His worth is worth ten times ten the like of your wizened affection. Manipulative and belittling thou art, for though you may believe yourself his superior in mind, yet thou art a beggar in the light of his heart and soul.”

“Richard Plantagenet had brothers. You have a sister…”

“ _John Watson_ , who I am and am not, hath a sister. I am grateful in this life to be free of _brothers_. I once slew the brothers I had, for causes insufficient, and yet for pain enough. Spare me the love of a brother, for mine were as niggardly with their love as a lawyer with honesty.”

“These would be the brothers you conspired to murder, wouldn’t they?”

Richard frowned but did not flinch from the charge. “Aye, that sin is mine to bear. They deserved not the death they met by my wiles, and yet their fates do not undo the truth, which is that my brothers loved me not in all my life, except as I was useful to them. Even dull Clarence, who claimed to clasp me to his bosom, did so only when it did not suit him better to mock me. 'Tis easy to profess to love a thing we despise, thereby to look generous-brave. ‘Oh, see the deformed and grizzled brat, see how difficult ‘tis to love. Watch me shew it kindness that you may praise my good and noble heart!’ Yet see how such love delivers itself when there is none to see and give such praise. I shall tell thee. Such love is delivered in blows and scorn and mockery. Spare me a brother’s love, I say. I would rather an honest enemy than such false and conceitful admiration.”

“I’ll be an honest enemy, then,” said Mycroft, “Whatever is going on here, whatever brainwashing you have undergone and attempt to perpetrate on Sherlock, you’ll never see the light of day again.”

“The light of day is nought to me, nor yet the dark of night, for all day, night, sun and stars are within the eyes of my love, and he comes for me,” said Richard.

“He hasn’t found you yet,” said Mycroft coldly, “He still thinks it’s a lieutenant of Moriarty’s that’s taken you. He’s waiting for the body parts to arrive.”

“Your tender care of him is brutal indeed,” observed Richard darkly, “That you would thus destroy him with despair.”

“He’ll get over you.”

Richard held still, and in his gold-flecked eyes there stole a look that was more John than Richard, but no less a flame; no less a towering rage.

“Have you sent him someone else’s fingers?”

Mycroft shrugged. “Not yet. Though it may become necessary soon, to make him desist.”

“He comes for me,” breathed John-and-Richard.

“He won’t find you.”

On the instant, Mycroft proved himself a liar, as the door to the underground chamber opened, and there stood Sherlock Holmes: tall as the sky, thunderous as a volcano, cold as the moon.

And before Mycroft could wield his clever tongue and begin their ever-chasing war of words, Sherlock punched Mycroft in the face, sending the older brother to the floor in a flash of blood and cursing.

Mycroft sought to stand but was dragged instead to his feet and thrown in a chair, where he was tied by his own tie and hastily torn shirt. When Mycroft made to speak, Sherlock slapped him so hard that his teeth cut the inside of his cheek, and instead of speaking, he bled.

“John, are you all right?”

“Aye, love.”

Sherlock’s gaze wrenched up to him, and his brow furrowed in doubt and despair. “John?”

“He claims to be Richard,” said Mycroft thickly, dribbling blood.

Sherlock, hearing commotion without, slammed the door shut, before stalking over to John-and-Richard’s prison. He made himself say it. “Richard?”

“Here we both reside, love, so intermingled we are not separated,” said his love gently, “John I am and Richard too, loving with full heart both the Sherlock and Khan within your own soul, and all the other names besides, which we have worn in our long searching for each other.”

Sherlock’s response was a choking, stifled cry, and he pressed his hand to the glass. On the other side, John-and-Richard pressed his own hand in mirror to that palm. Then Sherlock seized upon the door that separated them yet, and fed in the six digit code to release the lock, the melody and pattern of the beeps he had memorised from Richard’s memory of them, shared with Khan during their communing dreams.

Sherlock snatched Richard to him, held that too-thin body hard against his own, brushed cheek and jaw against the beloved face, now soft-furred with unruly bearded growth. John-and-Richard clung with his one good arm, and remembered again that the other was not in this life useless, and so wrapped them both around Sherlock and held good and tight.

For his part, Sherlock took John-and-Richard’s left hand in his right and kissed fingers, knuckles, palm, with soft and soulful reverence. It was then that Sherlock, blinking hard, noticed the needle track marks up, all up, John-and-Richard’s arm.

“I’ll kill him,” Sherlock snarled.

“No, love. Fie, no, no,” his love entreated him, “See, our scars are matching now, thine own youthful suffering from when you were alone, and mine new-wrought for being parted from thee. Yet fear not, and do not weep, my prince, my lord, my love. Do not fear. Your brother is but a man, and afeared of us, for he will not understand love except as something he may possess and control. He makes himself a prison with his dread of it.”

“Don’t expect me to forgive him.”

“Then forgive him not, yet fear not for us, for me,” John-and-Richard stroked Sherlock’s back with his right hand, feathered soothing fingers over Sherlock’s face with his left, “All will be well. When the bewitching venom clears from my veins, yet I will be myself still, but claim the name of John, thy beloved and most staunch ally. We are one, and I will love thee till I or thou are dust, and yet love thee still, till time’s clock winds to sighing silence. And I will love thee yet thereafter, for my love will remain beyond time and stars and thought to measure them by. I love thee and have loved thee and will ever love thee.”

“Stop it,” growled Mycroft Holmes thickly from where he sat, tied to his chair, “Stop this infernal game.”

Sherlock whirled on him, then. “You’re the only one playing it,” he snarled, “Drugging John to get to this… this…” he looked on John-and-Richard, flinched, then softened in acceptance, “This other self he was. Richard.” He turned back to Mycroft. “As I used to be someone else, in another life, and that part of my soul still exists.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Shall we prove it to thee, then? Thou, so wedded to science?”

Both brothers looked at John–and-Richard then, who had moved into the room and taken himself to the table whereon rested a white box. He opened its lid, and tapped one of the bottles contained therein. “This friendly venom, which doth bring our former lives to light – what, pray, do you think it may tell us of thee?”

“What?” Mycroft said, voice thick with sudden fear.

“Truly, what lives have you led, that you are thus so filled with dread at who my love and I were and are become? What were the names of your soul in times past, and what name will it bear hence? You bear something in you of the cursed past, some other time-lost fool, that taught you so to fear love and to keep thy heart a convict. Unlock thy heart, Mycroft. Unseal the dungeon wherein you keep it prisoner.”

“John, let me….”

John-and-Richard smiled at Sherlock as he prepared a syringe. “Fear not, my love,” he said again, more firmly, “Am I not a prince of physick in this life, to heal as well as harm? I shall be gentler with him than ever he was with me, for to prove my superiority in this. And lo,” he withdrew his hand and the empty syringe, and they both looked at Mycroft, who stared at the blood welling from the pinprick in his arm in horror.

“What have you done to me?”

“I have but opened a door to your mind,” said John-and-Richard, “That you may learn the use of your older soul and that of your many lives.”

“And what use is it?” demanded Mycroft, voice shaking. He was sweating and his eyelids began to droop. Sherlock looked as though he might have felt sorry for him, but instead he drew closer to his bearded prince and looked down his nose at his brother, struggling under the influence of the sedative.

“Why, 'tis for growing in,” said John-and-Richard, “All of these lives are for learning of thine own true self, and for seeking a soul with whom to share that self. But first, aye, it is for knowing thy own heart and soul, the better to make it fit to offer to another. Khan, who is Sherlock, and I,” he smiled up at Sherlock, who nodded back, “We are brutal honest. We cannot hide our sins nor sorrows, nor wish to thus dissemble, for how can there be true accord in such a lie? In each other we find solace, and love matched to towering love. Our former rage and bloodlust to spite the world made us mad and lonely beasts. Our delight in one another gives us joy. I can no longer spite a world that gave me one such as he, my Zeus-like love, mine own god who perceived this monster that I was, and as I was painted before my monstrous time by those who professed my care and loved me not. My prince of stars saw instead a man, and found it in himself to love me, and found in me a capacity to love that none suspected.”

Mycroft, sagged in his chair, blinked up at them now, the brother and his love, through grim-set blue eyes.

“We are alike, my old self and thee,” John-and-Richard told him softly, “Before loss and suffering taught me to remake myself and seek my love, I too was all calculation, all manipulation, all charm without to hide the scheming within. You are less a brute than I, and yet have no colder heart than I once had. Your redemption, as was mine, lies in the love we have for that one other. You fear to love, yet 'tis the only thing that will make us human, and give our lives of sorrow and pain some meaning.”

“Thou. Art. A. Villain.”

Mycroft’s voice was unexpected, and it was rough with rage and fear and grief, and pitched high and soft, as a woman’s voice.

“Thou art,” said this voice from Mycroft that was not his voice, “A most wretched, murd’rous knave. Thou art a poisonous toad. Keep thee from my brother. Keep thee far from those whom I love, for thou art a black-hearted butcher and will slay all that I do love.”

Bitter tears fell from those blue eyes, and hatred blazed unquelled from them too.

“Who the hell are you?” snarled Sherlock. Now that he had accepted that he held Khan within him, and that Richard was part of John, he could see that his brother Mycroft, too, harboured an older soul.

Mycroft turned his tear-washed face up to him, and the hatred and rage all vanished in a face carved in sorrow and in fear. “Do not trust him, oh my brother, my love, my sons, do not trust him, he will kill thee while he smiles, he will paint his unholy hands with thy blood, as he once did to all whom I held dear. Run, my beloved, my hearts, my dear, oh, run from him.” By the end, he was sobbing, in that higher pitch, that womanly voice.

Words that puzzled Sherlock, however, struck home to Richard’s heart like the barbs of a spear.

“Oh,” breathed John-and-Richard, and through the sound came knowledge and grief and sorrow untold, “Oh, my lady, my lady, I have wronged thee much.”

Mycroft’s blue eyes turned hard once more when they turned to him. “Seek not my forgiveness, toad.”

“Nay,” he breathed, “For how can any forgiveness be offered for rank sins, so deep and wide and bloody.” John-and-Richard sank to his knees before those eyes, his expression stricken.

Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder, his love’s face puzzled and distressed, drew an explanation.

“Tis Elizabeth, Queen,” said the kneeling man, “Whose husband, my brother Edward, I did conspire to murder. Whose brother I slew. Whose sons I slew, their precious, innocent blood a path on which I rose to my throne. Whose kin, Hastings, Grey and Vaughan, I did murder for my crown. Oh, my love, my Khan, my Sherlock, here are my sins come to seek their vengeance on me, and I cannot find it in me to protest. I am not innocent, but steeped and bloody in crimes against this lady, this Elizabeth of Lancaster. I am a wretched villain, indeed.”

Sherlock knelt by his weeping love.

“No. Or yes. But that was Richard, and long ago, and you’ve paid that price. I know you have. You suffered…”

“Aye, as have I suffered,” snarled Queen Elizabeth in the body of that man, Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, “As I have called to heaven for vengeance, and here thou art, villain, at my mercy.”

“Aye,” sighed Richard, and he looked up to her, his grief and guilt naked before her. “And I know no reason why thou shouldst show me any. That I repent me of my deeds is not enough. What wilt thou?”

“I would that thou would die, and thus save my new brother Sherlock from thy cruelty.”

Richard blinked hard. “I would die before I let harm come to him,” he said, “I would cut out mine own tongue before I said a hard word to him I love. I would cut my throat to prevent a breath that would bring the smallest hurt to him.”

The queen strained in her bonds to loom over the sorrowful Richard. “ _Then do it_.”

Richard looked about him for a knife, only to find his hand stilled in the hand of Sherlock. “If you do it,” Sherlock said, “I will kill myself and follow you into death. At once. I’m not drugged off my head like you two, but I know who we are. What we are. What the waiting cost. If you kill yourself to protect me, forgetting that you’re not the slightest threat to me, then I’ll cut my own throat, the sooner to find you in our next life. Do you understand me?”

Richard, cheeks and beard wet with his grief, gazed wide-eyed at his Sherlock. “Aye, love. Aye. Do not. Do not. Do not harm thy self.”

“Then don’t you, either. You’re not that Richard any more.”

“Yet Richard I am, and cannot escape.”

Sherlock took the beloved face in his two hands. “You grew, Richard. John. You grew in all those lives. We grew. Towards each other. She didn’t. She holds onto her hatred and grief for what was done, but you‘re no longer the Richard who did those things.”

“No. And yet I am responsible.”

Sherlock kissed Richard’s brow and pulled him close, folding long arms around Richard’s trembling body and pressing the grieving man against his chest. He looked up at Mycroft-the-Queen, and frowned at those eyes full of pain looking down at them.

“You would not,” whispered Elizabeth, “You could not kill yourself in pursuit of his spirit.”

“I could. I would.”

“How am I to protect you from him?”

Sherlock swallowed. He brushed his cheek against Richard’s hair, kissed the bowed crown of his head, and fixed the dead queen with a stare. “He will protect me from himself. He has killed to protect me. He has willingly taken injury and risked death to protect me. He would die for me. Your enemy has become your ally. He would do anything he must to keep me safe. You must see that.”

Elizabeth scowled. “As would you for him.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said simply. “I love him. If I really am one of your family reborn, I’m also Khan Noonien Singh, reborn again and again to be with him. You can’t separate us without doing me harm. So what’s it to be?”

“I cannot trust him. He hath slaughtered my heart.”

“Then trust me. This Richard is also John Watson, whatever I am, and he would give his last breath for me.”

The queen’s countenance was distraught. “You trust him?”

“Yes.”

“With thy precious heart?”

“Heart, head, body and soul. Whatever he was, he grew. We grew. Time for you to grow, too. Mycroft.”

The queen blinked. “He is here. He is afraid.”

Richard, with the glow of John returning to his blue eyes, raised his head, though he stayed within the safe circle of Sherlock’s arms. “I understand why Mycroft has kept his heart a prisoner,” he said, “But it is time to be free. Oh my lady, I am sorry for the wrong I did thee. I know not how to balance the scale. I have suffered and died a hundred lives to be worthy of our Sherlock’s love, and yet so much blood am I steeped in, that there can never be accounting between you and I. Yet I offer thee this – I will die before I let he whom we love come to hurt. I will suffer and die a hundred times more to keep him safe. I will love him and love him and love him with all I have and am for all my life and all the lives to come, if he will have me. You cannot forgive me, yet know that I will be his shield and his sword for all time.”

She struggled against the ties, and when Richard went to untie her, Sherlock took over and released her bonds.

Queen Elizabeth leaned forward, placed her hand on Richard’s head, then seized a handful of his hair and tugged. He rose, wincing, but did not try to free himself, for all of Sherlock’s angry protests.

“Defend my brother,” she snarled, “Protect him as thoroughly as thou didst betray your own brothers and thy nephews and thy wife.”

“My body and soul are thus promised eternally to him,” swore Richard.

“Then I may yet forgive you, in another life.” She released him, and sagged thereafter in the chair, breathing heavily.

When those pale blue eyes opened again, they belonged once more to Mycroft, who blanched.

“Get him out of here,” said Mycroft, gruff with horror.

Sherlock rose, dragging an increasingly groggy John up with him.

Mycroft opened the door for them, and issued instructions that his brother and Doctor Watson were to leave, unmolested.

After they had gone, he went to the box of sedatives and broke each and every one of the ampules it contained. Then he sat, head in hands, and in despair, tried to understand what next to do with himself and this unwelcome knowledge.

*

The drive to London was long and fretful. John, thin and shivering, lay curled in the passenger seat, his head on Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock stroked his hair and cheek periodically as they drove – until John sat up.

“Turn here,” he said. Sherlock, unquestioning, turned the car and drove. He followed the instructions John gave him, getting further and further from the main roads, further into greenery, until at last he pulled over at a tangle of woods near a little river.

John stumbled from the car and staggered to the river. He folded down beside the water and stared at it.

Sherlock followed, and sat behind him. He spread his legs on either side of John’s hips, and pulled him back against his chest.

“Are you all right?” John asked.

Sherlock laughed ruefully, his nose buried against the back of John’s neck. “I still want to thrash him.”

“Yes. Well.”

Sherlock’s arms tightened around John’s waist. “You’re not Richard.”

“No. But I used to be.”

“What he did isn’t your fault.”

“No. But what he was is part of me.”

“He grew.”

John leaned back. He tilted his head and turned it so that Sherlock could kiss him. They did, for a while.

“So did you,” said John, “Or Khan, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock simply.

They sat like that for a while more, until Sherlock noted, “This place looks familiar.”

“I think it’s what’s left of the glade where they met,” said John.

The glade. Their glade. Unchanged in dreams. Here, now, a mass of unsightly shrubs and a water-starved brook. Yet still their glade.

John turned further in Sherlock's arms, and they kissed. Sherlock paused, then rubbed the tip of his nose into John’s month-old beard. He bit at the short hairs and tugged with his teeth, making John laugh, before seeking John’s mouth again and kissing him breathless.

“I want to take you home,” murmured Sherlock, “And find out why Khan likes having Richard’s bearded face pushing into all his sensitive parts. If you’re game.”

John, laughing softly, closed a hand over Sherlock’s thickening cock on one side, slid the other down Sherlock’s trousers to squeeze his bum on the other. “I’ll show you here by the brook, if you want. Nobody’s around.”

So they swam, and then shielded by their car and the tangled shrubs, John and Sherlock kissed and fondled and held to one another, before Sherlock lay belly-down on the blanket retrieved from the back of the car, and John kissed and nibbled and licked his love’s body. He spread Sherlock’s arse with his hands and did the same with his soft-bristled cheeks brushing the sensitive skin of Sherlock’s entrance and thighs; and as his hot, wet mouth pleasured him to climax.

Sherlock flopped back on the blanket, afterwards, wrecked with sensual release and emotional catharsis. He pulled John down on top of him, holding him close, then turned John onto his back on the blanket and kissed every portion of him on display, at last sliding his lips over John’s thick cock, wet with pre-come, and sucking, swirling his tongue over hot skin, until John arched and came in Sherlock’s greedy mouth.

*

Many hours later, while John and Sherlock slept in Baker Street once more, Khan and Richard clung to each other in the soft green shelter of their glade.

Khan rocked Richard in his arms, and hummed a soothing song, while Richard curled in his love’s embrace, content to be thus held.

“If she returns,” murmured Khan, “You must not listen to her, nor harm yourself. You are no danger to me, nor any longer to any she holds dear. Richard, my lionheart, do not you ever leave me.”

Richard nuzzled his bearded face into Khan’s pale throat. “I forgot myself but briefly, love. 'Tis a heavy burden, sometimes, the monster that I was.”

“And are no longer,” said Khan, then he kissed Richard’s brow. “You are my own heart, my soul. If I were kin to her then, I don’t remember. But you are everything to me now, and I am safe with you.”

“Aye.” Richard uncurled from his place in the well of Khan’s arms, and turned, moving his legs, so that he straddled Khan’s lap. He kissed his pale, starlit prince, long and deep. They grew hard where their groins pressed together, and Richard rose up to his knees, adjusted, then slowly wriggled down to impale himself on Khan’s hard shaft. They rocked together now, slow and languid, kissing and stroking beloved skin all the while. No words were spoken, save whispers of one another’s name, of _I love you_ , and _dearest_ and _beloved_ , until all words were soft cries of exultation, and then murmurs once more.

And thus embraced and embracing, those two souls rested together, whole and content, restored and at peace again.

*

In a lonely home in a costly portion of London, Mycroft Holmes sat in his lonely chair, nursing his cut and swollen mouth, and contemplated the reasons that he worked such long hours, resisting rest in a bed that was cold.

He wanted to repudiate everything that had happened these last few weeks, but his veins held the residual temper of that grieving queen, whose memories and fear were fresh in his mind. He would like to have rejected the whole as ludicrous, but that the footage from the secure unit had confirmed it all.

The footage had already been destroyed, of course, but he had memorised it from the single playback. The few staff he had maintained at the site had all been reassigned – once they’d recovered from Sherlock’s assault, wherein he’d rendered each of the four unconscious. (Perhaps they might be recalled from their new, remote, foreign locales at some point in the future. If he could be sure of their silence.)

 _I am not afraid_ , Mycroft told himself, but he did loathe to be a liar, even to himself, and he knew he was afraid. At least now, he knew why, or so it seemed.

_Once upon a time there was a queen, and almost everyone she loved was murdered…_

But that was many lives ago, and perhaps it was time to grow, as the reformed butcher, Richard the Third of England, had claimed.

Mycroft’s fingers lingered over his phone and he scrolled through the few numbers in it till the one he contemplated glowed on the screen.

He turned off the phone without dialling.

Perhaps tomorrow.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have many exciting projects happening out in The World. It would be wonderful if you could [ visit this page and support a Johnlock publisher](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Improbable-Press/722133377904170), or [ toddle over here to support a new anthology](http://www.narrellemharris.com/short-stories/new-release-encounters-edited-by-jessica-augustsson/) in which I have a story.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Wondrous Strange](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4769969) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




End file.
